


Cognitive Dissonance

by sylviaviridian



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Angst, Cruxis-era, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 09:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3322142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviaviridian/pseuds/sylviaviridian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-game, Pre-Renegades. Yuan argues with himself and comes to a conclusion. Angsty and psychological, mentions Martel but not enough to warrant a ship tag.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cognitive Dissonance

A man sits at his desk, staring without sight at the richly-carved wood. The surface gleams in the low light of an incandescent bulb, more natural and torchlike than the functional areas of this world they’ve taken for themselves. There is not a single paper out of place, not a speck of dust to be seen, even on the bookshelves that line the walls, their contents meticulously kept up despite being unread for centuries at a time. It’s a perfect semblance of a comfortable life, but the man in the comfortable chair at the beautiful desk is too far inside his own mind to appreciate any of it right now. His brow is furrowed with the weight of thoughts he cannot afford to speak aloud.

_It doesn’t feel right anymore,_ he thinks. _This has been going on too long. We’re manipulating all of them, now, and not to their own benefit. It’s one thing to do it to the humans - we all know they’d just screw things up worse if left to their own designs. No one cares what the elves think, and it serves the dwarves right for trying to stay neutral, but…we’re doing the same thing even to our own people, using them like expendable pawns, and he’s just going to abandon them when we’re done? What was it all for, anyway?_

A memory stirs from the back of his mind, rising from a place where he’d long ago pushed everything that could cause him pain, bringing with it a soft, gentle voice (he remembers still, too well, how she sounded laughing and alive) and a taste of the sunlight he can no longer feel on his skin.

_Our people, their people, your people, my people…it’s all wrong-headed, isn’t it?_ she had said (to who? he doesn’t remember now). _We all have to live on this world. I’m not here to just fight for ‘my’ people. Anything that affects any of us affects all of us. In the end…we’re all just people._

At the time, those words had only made him love her more. Now, they make him shake his head, disturbed in a way he can’t articulate even in the safety of his own mind.

_…We haven’t lived that way in so long. Ever since they murdered her…we couldn’t, could we? We tried, but they always refused to see-!_

From the same place in the back of his mind, another voice rises, but this one is his own, cold and sharp, unforgiving as he’s trained himself to be since he lost her. _Are you saying she was wrong, then?_

_No!_ The denial is instinctive. _No, not wrong, never wrong. Not her. She could never be wrong…_

_That’s a lie._ The cold voice is sneering at him now. _She was a mortal woman, as fallible as any. Everyone makes mistakes, don’t they? All these centuries, they’re just proof that her way of living could only end in tragedy._

_That’s not true! That spirit, that attitude, is the only reason we were able to get as far as we did. We need her here, to finish building her world. We’ve kept working toward it all this time, but we need her back, more than anything. That’s why…that’s why…_ His train of thought trails off, unable to withstand the taste of his own lukewarm excuses.

_This is her world, then?_ the voice asks simply, and he thinks about the things he’s seen over the past few days. The humans and half-elves motivated toward their goals by hatred of one another, the elves locked safely in the borders of their forest, the dwarves working in the mines and laboratories, muttering to one another in their own tongue just far enough away that he can pretend not to hear them, the empty angelic servants wandering the halls of the castle ready to obey his slightest whim.

_The whole reason we went this far was because we needed her, needed that faith…the faith she had in all people…_ He buries his face in his hands suddenly, not out of grief, but in a wild and futile effort to block out the view of the room around him, the intolerable world that it represents, the world they built in her name.

_Spirits about us…_ He can’t breathe. He doesn’t really need to breathe, but he still feels like he’s drowning, like he’s falling, like he’s stepped forward onto a surface that wasn’t there and now all he can do is brace himself and wonder if hitting the bottom will kill him.

_I think_

and he wants to cry

_I might_

but the release of tears is another thing denied him by choices he made, so long ago, when all he had was his rage

_have made a mistake…_

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first draft of this years ago, and never did anything with it. Finally pulled it out for a rewrite, and made myself cry a little in the process, so hopefully someone else also enjoys it.


End file.
